DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

From my perch on the middle treadmill, I have a clear view of the lat pulldown machine at the gym. This is the most popular strength-training machine in the room, by a factor of about 2 to 1. I’m not sure why that is, but just about everyone does a set of lat pulldowns, whereas very few people approach the bench press, possibly because it’s a lot harder to choke yourself to death with the pulldown machine.

Sometimes it seems like half the residents of this town stop by the gym to do a single set of lat pulldowns (but nothing else). If all these people had good form, tourists would think the town was inhabited by aliens — for no matter what people’s native body type would be, thin, fat, athletic, pregnant, whether they’re toddlers or wheelchair bound, they’d all have bulging biceps, rhomboids, and latissimus dorsi.

But alas, good form is not in abundant supply. If each instance of someone using the lat pulldown machine were represented by a musical note, the gym would be a a cacophony of atonal noise. Which might be an improvement over the “lite jazz” muzak playing on the stereo actually. I’ve seen people twisting, hanging, bouncing, whipsawing their torsos back and forth in an effort to simply pull the bar down. The average set of 12 reps is completed in less than 8 seconds. I think that all these people could instead go eat a piece of pie for 8 seconds for all the good this is doing them.

Please don’t misunderstand — I have nothing against pie. I just don’t treat pie as a strength-training device. Pie is not a critical element in my fitness regimen. As a general statement, I can say there is no entry on my training chart for “pastry.”

Kudos to HP for launching a new computer recycling program. Read about it in the SF Chronicle’s article, “Recycling the HP Way.”

For all of you with short attention spans, the deal is basically this: every few years, everyone gets a new computer and discards the old one. Discarding computers is problematic because computers contain lead and other toxic chemicals. I’ll say that a different way because “toxic chemicals” appears in the news so often the phrase has lost its ability to shock.

The problem is that computers contain poison. When you put computers in a landfill, they poison the ground, and before too long your children begin sprouting extra fingers.

HP and a number of other organizations (listed in the Chronicle article) will instead refurbish your discarded machines, or grind them into scrap and reclaim all the toxic ingredients.

HP’s program sounds pricey to me so I’ll make a special mention of the CRC — California’s Computer Recycling Center, the recent recipient of most of my old Macintoshes. The CRC’s mission is similar to HP’s, but the CRC charges less (only $1 per CPU, and then only if it’s a very old machine).

Update — the CRC raised its prices today! The fee for old CPUs is now $2, and the fee for monitors is $10 (up from $6).

On the left: JWZ’s DNA Lounge, rebuilt for large sums of money from the skeleton of a club also called the DNA Lounge, and still being remodeled. On the right: the Sebastopol Cinemas, a small-town multiplex built for large sums of money from the skeleton of an apple brandy distillery, and still being remodeled.

It’s a sad day for online journal fans… two of my daily reads (dack, eod) have gone off the air.

The phone rings.

“Yes, hello?” I say, practicing my radio DJ voice, deep and mellifluous.

An accented and agitated female asks an odd question: “Who’s bacon?” It’s Agent Starling! But why is she asking for bacon? It’s not even breakfast time.

“Who’s bacon?” I say back to her. While there are no doubt hundreds of witty responses one might employ when a caller asks, “Who’s bacon,” exactly none of them came to mind. I did wonder if this was a Hannibal reference — maybe she’d stumbled across a serving of hickory smoked bias-cut while on the trail of Hannibal Lecter and wondered about the source. That is, maybe the question wasn’t “Who owns that bacon,” but “Who is that bacon?” But in the moment, as now, I was unable to distill that joke into a pithy 3-4 words.

“Who’s baking?” she said, somewhat more clearly. I marvel that I’m discussing breakfast foods with a Hollywood celebrity.

“Ahh, baking. I might be, later, but…” I can’t imagine how she would know that. Is there a camera crew shooting through my kitchen window? I imagine the operator zooming in on a jar of sourdough starter bubbling quietly on the sink while television viewers worldwide sit on the edges of their seats, listening to my baffled responses through a crackly satellite link to the broadcast station. “Can I ask who’s calling?”

Alas, she didn’t own up to being Clarice Starling, or even Jodie Foster. She muttered something about dialing the wrong number — a likely story! — and hung up on me.